


Window Shopping

by twistedingenue



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Mistletoe, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I cannot find a single helpful person in this whole store, and you might notice that the height fairy did not bless me like some of the others.” Her hand follows her body, head to waist. “I need that thing from the top shelf. It’s not heavy, but I’ve learned from experience that most stores do not appreciate it when you climb their inventory.”  She smiles brightly, trying with earnest to get Steve to help her.</p>
<p>She doesn’t really need all those words for Steve to help her, and it’s not even because she’s pretty with wide lips and vivid blue eyes hiding away behind dark-rimmed glasses that he helps her. He’d help anyone grab something off a shelf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Window Shopping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sometimesyoufly (faile02)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faile02/gifts).



> Thank you's to my usual cast of cheerleaders, and jadziabear for beta-ing, and thanks to nessismore for hosting this exchange. 
> 
> Written for the prompt: Steve never did get to a kiss a girl under the mistletoe.

“Hey, tall guy. Yes, you, what other tall guy do you see around here?” A young woman taps at Steve’s shoulder. “You’re tall enough that you should mostly just see the tops of heads.”

Steve turns, taking care not to knock over the displays that someone has haphazardly set up in the middle of the aisle, to face the woman. She doesn’t have that look of awed recognition that he gets every so often, that moment where someone, usually a child, looks past his everyday attire and sees him, sees Captain America. No, this woman has an entirely different expression, and it’s one of impatience.

“Yes ma’am?” he answers politely. “Is there something—“

“I cannot find a single helpful person in this whole store, and you might notice that the height fairy did not bless me like some of the others.” Her hand follows her body, head to waist. “I need that thing from the top shelf. It’s not heavy, but I’ve learned from experience that most stores do not appreciate it when you climb their inventory.”  She smiles brightly, trying with earnest to get Steve to help her.

She doesn’t really need all those words for Steve to help her, and it’s not even because she’s pretty with wide lips and vivid blue eyes hiding away behind dark-rimmed glasses that he helps her. He’d help anyone grab something off a shelf.

“Thanks,” she says. “My boss wants the weirdest things sometimes. She asked for this,” she shakes the box that Steve got down for her, some sort of kitchen gadget that he’s seen commercials for but can’t actually figure out what it’s supposed to do, “and it’s all sold out closer to the labs and she wouldn’t wait for amazon to deliver and…” She breaks off, looking up at Steve. “Sorry, it’s the holidays. I get a little frazzled when I have to go to Macy’s during the season, you know?” Much of her hair is hiding under a knit cap, but she’s so full of kinetic energy that a curl escapes for her to tuck behind her ear.

“No, it’s alright,” Steve says, just grateful that he hasn’t been found out in the middle of Macy’s. “Happy to help, have a good holiday.”

She smiles, lifts her eyebrows and turns towards the checkout wishing him good cheer. Good cheer is easy to fake and hard to come by, and every little bit helps.

* * *

Steve had only gone out to look at the windows. He and Bucky had scampered off to them a few times when they were kids, before they had even quit school. They were always bright and always filled with wishes and always out of reach. Bucky would press his fingers and his face to the glass until someone would shoo them off, cleaning the smudges away.

It was always crisp and cold, and they were always cold too. Bucky had newspaper in his too big shoes, but he’d chatter all the way back about how when he was just a few years older and his mom would let him work, he’d buy his sister Rebecca all the best toys and a warmer coat too.

Somehow the new windows didn’t have the same promise to them, even if they were beautiful and bright.

* * *

This time, it’s Bloomingdales. He thinks. He went to Macy’s for the windows, but he’d come back to the apartment and found it unlocked. Which means that someone has broken in, and that someone is very likely a redhead with a penchant for dragging Steve to places that will “modernize” him. As far as Steve is aware, you modernize a kitchen, not a person. But Natasha doesn’t pay that any mind, and believes that as long as she can reinvent herself, Steve can too.

“New haircut?” he said, throwing his wallet and keys on the counter. Natasha keeps her hair red, but it’s straight now, and it’s such a far cry from how he remembers women looking (women did their best not to have flat hair, if they could avoid it) and the style is a little jarring.

“Stark’s throwing a party this weekend,” Natasha smiled from a leather chair. “Curls are played out. You got a haircut, too, I see. Couldn’t find a hipster barber willing to disturb the hair on your head?”

“I haven’t grown enough facial hair to be seen in those places.” Steve likes his new haircut, he likes that he blends in better with, and it pains him to say this, his age group. Give or take a few decades. “It’s not the first time Stark’s thrown a party, Natasha.” In fact, he threw one last week. Or at least, Tony called it a party. Steve called it a waste of time and good money, just to rent out half a restaurant so the Avengers could all go out to eat.

“Let me rephrase, Stark is throwing a party, Pepper is the one in charge of it.” Well that’s different, Steve supposes. Women like to primp and change how they look for their friends. It is a very nice haircut, sleek and a slightly different red than before. Natasha’s the sort that loves variations on a theme in her own personal expression. Undercover she can be anyone, but when its just her, she’s always vibrantly Natasha.

“So did you break in to talk about our haircuts tonight?” Steve asks. “Or was there something else?”

Natasha lifts her eyebrows, checks her nails, a careful study in femininity, “It’s a Pepper party, so I wanted to make sure you had the appropriate level of formal wear.”

“I own a suit.”

“Yes, you do own a suit,” she replies quickly, “a singular suit, and while it looks quite dashing on you, it’s not exactly what is required. I left pictures.”

“Not going to take me shopping?” Steve smiles, teasing her.

Natasha touches her neck, fingering a delicate chain. “No, I’ve got to kidnap Barton and force him into clothes that are neither assigned to him or over a decade old. You I trust not to look like an idiot.”

“You trust me?”

“Well, you might still look outdated, but at least you’ll have some decade’s idea of formalwear. I do not hold this hope for Clint,” she sighs almost girlishly. “He once showed up to an inter-agency party wearing a purple checked t-shirt because it was the best thing he had.”

And that’s how Steve finds himself standing outside of Bloomingdales, with a hoodie half zipped up over one of his many plaid shirts. He runs hot all the time, a side effect of the serum that he’s never really bothered to be upset by, not after years of being cold every winter, the chill always in his bones but never having enough to keep it out. People brush past him as he looks at the window just a bit longer than anyone that isn’t under the age of ten.

* * *

  


A woman knocks into him, pushed by the crowd, and on reflex, he leans over to help her up. Clad in a dark coat, he recognizes her from Macy’s when she looks up at him. It’s her eyes, he thinks,  he can’t forget those at all. “Hey, it’s tall guy. How about that?” she laughs, grabbing onto his shoulder for balance. “How are you not freezing?” Her hair escapes a knit cap and hangs about her shoulders, and it’s all of his reserve not to see if it is as soft as it looks.

“I’ve got a high tolerance. Boss got you out running errands?” he asks, still holding her steady.

“No, I wish.” She lets go of his shoulder, looking a little embarrassed. “No, now my boss has me out shopping. She’s somehow got me wrangled into going to this work party or something. Except it’s like, the scientist version of prom or something, and she’s had me crossing oceans over the past couple of years and I don’t exactly carry that sort of dress with me when I’m living out of two suitcases.” She pauses, “And half of one of those has sensitive equipment of hers.”

Steve chuckles low in his throat, letting it escape while guiding her towards the door. The woman digs her heels in. “Are you laughing at me?”

“No,” he says. It’s coming out as a full fledged laugh now. “No, I just... I have the same thing. I’ve been, well, let’s call it out of the country. My co-worker is throwing one of those overdressed parties, and I’ve got the same problem.”

“Ugh, work parties,” she says, smiling through a scowl when Steve opens the door for her. “Forced socialization and people you never want to see drunk, and someone is always really creepy with the mistletoe. And they always seem to find me. Don’t you just hate that?”

“I’ve never…” he responds, missing her presence when she steps into the building and away from him. “Mistletoe wasn’t a thing where I’m from. Never got the chance to kiss anyone under it.”

“Well,” she says, the crowd pulling her away as she heads towards the women’s section, “I hope you get that chance. What girl would say no!” She nearly yells the last part, turning her head back over her shoulder with an even louder grin.

  


He sees her again, separated by checkout counters and lines, and she holds up a sleek red dress that promises nothing but rolling curves and promises that he won’t see come to fruition. She mouths out, the motions exaggerated on her lips, “What do you think?”

Steve smiles and ducks his head, giving her a thumbs up, and is half a step from getting out of line and seeing if she’ll give him her name, maybe a number, maybe an invitation to see her in that dress.

“Can I please have your clothes?” the cashier snaps and grabs his attention, the people behind him in line annoyed at his distraction.

“Right,” he replies, turning his attention and focus to the frazzled clerk. “Sorry about that.”

  


The girl is gone by the time Steve finishes paying.

* * *

  


He’s going to the wrong party, he’s sure of it. Pepper is fantastic and all, and it’s bound to be an alright time. Steve’s not a stick in the mud, he can talk and mingle amongst a crowd that will probably recognize him on sight. But his stubborn mind won’t stop thinking about a single woman with a pretty dress, who flirts because she likes the look of him, and not the myth and fame around him.

  


* * *

So now Steve owns two suits, and for good measure a few new shirts that aren’t the sort of thing the finer men in the neighborhood wore when he was a kid.

“A fine measure of a man.” Natasha greets him warmly with a kiss on the cheek. “Of course, you could probably put on rags and have it come out looking good.”

“It’s more difficult than you’d think,” Steve admits. “Used to be everything was too big for me, and now everything is too small. If it fits my shoulders, it’s too loose  here,” he points to his waist, picking at the fabric, “And if it fits there, I’ll rip the seams.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Natasha deadpans. “That would just be horrible. We’d have to have a shirt budget for you, just like Banner. You find a tailor then?”

“If you would’ve told me that someday I’d have a personal tailor, I would have said yeah, and there’s a bridge I can see you.” There’s a flash of red out of the corner of his eye.

“Amazing, Thor did manage to get the ladies out of the lab for a night,” Natasha juts her eyebrows towards the door. “Have you met Doctor Foster and Darcy, Steve?”

He’s never met Doctor Foster, just seen her photo once or twice, but he has met Darcy. The red dress looks better on her than in his imagination, and Steve has a very good eye for visual details. Her hair is straightened, but her lips are the same dark red that, if he has to admit, he’s wanted to taste.

He doesn’t even notice that he’s been dragged over to them until he’s shaking Foster’s hand and losing whatever she’s saying to the general noise in his head.

“Hey, it’s tall guy.” Darcy’s eyes widen along with her mouth, expanding until all of her face is a smile. “What a city, am I right? Never know when the person you meet at the store is…” she blinks, taking a look around at the rest of the guests, the rest of the Avengers, high level SHIELD and Stark employees, those cleared to know who everyone is and what they do and mutters, “Probably fucking Captain America or something.”

Steve barks out a laugh and Darcy’s face darkens in embarrassment. “No, no, not like that, please, I…” Steve clears his throat, “I think you just told me to go fuck myself. I’m Steve, by the way.”

“God.” She covers her head with her hands, peeking out through her fingers. “I’m Darcy, and I’m going to go run away now.” She takes a few steps and Steve reaches out for her, lightly grasping her arm.

“Wait,” he says, trying to get out the words about how he’s quite okay with this development, that he’d really like to get to know her, but he trips over his tongue and his lips and twenty some odd years (give or take a few decades) of never quite knowing what to say around women that he likes, that he just ends up standing there with her arm underneath his fingertips.

“Hey, Cap!” Tony yells from across the room. “Did you actually manage to get a girl underneath the mistletoe?”

Steve looks up. Darcy looks up.  The little sprig is mocking him, because somehow he’s screwed this up without it ever really getting started.

“Well, it is tradition,” Darcy says, “and what girl would ever say no to a man like you?” She leans up, rising to the balls of her feet, using his arms on hers for leverage and kisses him. It’s soft and certain, longer than the perfunctory kisses that he’s seen others give through the night, and when she’s through, she slides her hand in his. “Why don’t you show me around, tall guy?”


End file.
